06
Jan, 2017

Ever know a juicy secret yet have to keep your lips sealed for what seems like an eternity? Torture! Well that’s what the Honokea team has been enduring lately. Our brilliant Spanish partners at Wavegarden have been working on a completely new wave pool for the last few years, and the first public mentions of the new technology have surfaced in Australia today. We’ve been keeping this secret for quite some time now and it feels great to at least begin to get this off our collective chests. Wavegarden’s official release won’t be until February.

The new system is called “The Cove”, and our team was just in Spain in November to test out the full-size prototype. Suffice to say we were completely blown away by what they’ve built. The quality of the wave and high frequency are major breakthroughs to say the least. Seeing how far this new technology has come since Wavegarden originally caught everyone’s attention back in 2011 is staggering.

URBNSURF Melbourne

Here’s what we can talk about now: Wavegarden’s Cove prototype is capable of producing up to 1,000 waves per hour, up to 6.9 feet in height and 18 seconds in duration each. That is a wave every 4 seconds. And did we mention the wave barrels perfectly? We can’t dive into how they do this just yet, but trust us, it works perfectly. The new lagoon design has diamond shape, and has a smaller footprint compared to the previous tech.

After the World Tour’s European leg, a handful of the world’s best were given NDA’s and a test session at the new lagoon, which is built next to the old one in San Sebastian. John John Florence, Josh Kerr, Julian Wilson, Ryan Callinan, Filipe Toledo, Matt Wilkinson, Alejo Muniz, Ace Buchan, were among the test pilots. A couple surf media outlets reached out to these gents for comment, Ryan Callinan said “It’s pretty… Crazy” before explaining that he couldn’t talk about it further. Their comments and more details about the technology will be revealed in February.

Australia’s URBNSURF, led by our good friend Andrew Ross, will be building this new technology in their first 3 parks in Melbourne, Perth, and Sydney. We will also be using the new tech in our next project in California.

Australian National Surf Team Coach Andy King at the Cove Prototype, November 2016

Here is an article that appeared in The Australian yesterday. With surfing to be included in the 2020 Olympics in Japan, Australia has already begun preparing by hiring surf-coach to the stars, Andy King (who has coached Mick Fanning, Julian Wilson, Adriano De Souza, and more) as their National Surf Coach. King was there for the test session last November.

“They have finally replicated something that’s got similar power to the ocean with the unpredictability of the ocean… You get training done in three or four days that would take you three or four months in the ocean,” King said.

Considering the learning curve provided by such repetition we could see many more countries following suit by preparing coaches, assembling teams, and building one of these pools for training to gear up for 2020.

Articles from Stab, MSW, and Beachgrit have already surfaced with more to come. We can’t wait to share all the photos and videos of the Cove, once Wavegarden gives everyone the green light. Soon!